


existing in two places

by badbrains



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bottom Derek Hale, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badbrains/pseuds/badbrains
Summary: Sometimes, Derek doesn’t even know if he is real.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 16
Kudos: 108





	existing in two places

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this just because i felt like it and derek deserves to be taken care of goddamn it 
> 
> title inspired by a line from margaret atwood's _corpse song_ "i exist in two places / here and where you are"
> 
> no beta <3

Sometimes, Derek doesn’t even know if he is real. 

Every time he grasps hold of something good, it slips between his fingers. He constantly lets everyone down, shows everyone the worst parts of himself until they are certain that is all he is made of. The bad. He looks at everyone around him, his pack, and he knows, deep down, that he has ruined their lives. He just stands, just stands and breathes and tries to orient himself, tries to feel like he is here. Really here. Because when the blistering coil wraps itself around his chest, engulfs his heart and ignites his veins, he wonders if he is even a man at all. If he exists outside of the hurt. If he continued living beyond the time when the fire was real, when it was right in front of him. Curling his fingers into the sheets, he feels like he is being licked by flames. This is proof, he thinks. The fire has always been inside of him. 

Stiles presses him down gently, bowing him into the mattress, on his stomach.

He kisses slowly down Derek’s spine, taking his time. He moves back up, unhurried, traces the tattoo on Derek’s back with his tongue, branding him. He feels like he is going to explode, being touched like he matters, touched like he is something fragile. Derek has never felt fragile before. The fragile don’t survive, not as werewolves. The fragile light up like kerosene. He would know. 

But, Stiles is trailing his fingertips along Derek’s skin like he is someone to be loved. It makes him feel like he is made of glass, like Stiles is welding him into something meaningful. Stiles gives him purpose, these days. He bites into his lip, hard. This is nothing like he thought it would be. Nothing like what he thought love was. What he was taught at sixteen, when the idea of love was caked in ash, smeared across the skin of his throat with careless hands, coating his tongue until it was all he could taste. Forever. 

He presses back, needing more. Needing something to distract him, something to bring him back before he slips away. He is tired of losing everything he cares about to the Argents. He won’t let her burn this, too. 

Stiles pants into the nape of his neck, fits his hands into the dips at the base of Derek’s spine and _grinds._ Derek’s head drops forward against the mattress, framed by where his forearms are straining with the effort it takes to keep still, the effort it takes not to vibrate out of his skin. Stiles curls his fingers and Derek curls with him, almost ashamed to be liking it. He has never allowed himself to be vulnerable without paying the price. Has never bared his back without it becoming a burial ground for arrows. With every thrust, Stiles pulls the barbs from his spine, smooths him out and shows him that vulnerable doesn’t mean weak. Sometimes, it can mean brave. It can mean _love_. He huffs a laugh at himself that dissolves into a groan when Stiles scrapes his teeth across the blade of his left shoulder. He smears words that are barely making sentences into the skin at the base of Derek’s neck. His lips are molten and Derek claws at the sheets to remind himself he is here, that he exists. To keep himself from ceasing, crumbling. 

When the ache mounts into a stinging burn, he ruts against the mattress, the rustling of the sheets loud in the quiet that is only punctuated by heavy pants, gasping breaths. He gives a careful, exploratory thrust that makes his muscles clench, his knuckles turning white above his head, where it’s bracketed between his arms. 

Stiles breathes a laugh that billows across his shoulders, raising gooseflesh while he shivers. He grits his teeth and rocks back, arches up with purpose just to hear how Stiles’ throat clicks, how the laugh morphs into a drawn-out moan that he shakily buries into the side of Derek’s neck. 

Stiles gasps _you have no idea how often I think about this_ and Derek pushes up, trying to say _I know,_ and _me too_ , and _shut up_ , and _please, please never stop_ but all he can do is breathe hard against the pillows and hope that he doesn’t look as desperate as he feels, as close to fraying apart as he always seems. 

He splays a hand across Derek’s lower back, fingers curling and straightening. The other is holding him up, sunken within the mattress beside Derek’s head so he can only see Stiles’ wrist in his peripheral. The backs of his thighs sting from where Stiles’ legs are making contact, the other man now pressing Derek into the sheets, murmuring praise through grit teeth while Derek feels hot all over, slick with a burning sweat-sheen. 

Derek feels Stiles’ hand curl into a trembling fist while his hips falter, pace stuttering while he makes a choked sound. Derek looks back, vision foggy, and Stiles smooths his hand back out, promising _I’ve got you._

He would hate how that sounds, if it were coming from anyone else. He has grown to hate performative sentiments, the meaning lost throughout years of their absence. But, instead of cringing away from this, he curves toward it. Like a goddamn plant in the sun. Because Stiles does have him. Stiles has thrown himself in the line of fire time and time again for Derek, has proven that he will drag himself when he cannot walk, will die if it means someone else can live. If it means Derek can live. 

No one has ever attached value to his life in the way Stiles has. Does. Stiles can sift through the hurt and the pain and the fear, he can crack the surface until it is just Derek. And he doesn’t think what he sees is bad. He thinks it is good. It has been so long since someone has thought that Derek was good. 

Stiles makes him feel like maybe he doesn’t have to change. Maybe, when everything goes wrong, it isn’t always his fault. And if it is, he doesn’t have to deal with it alone. 

Stiles groans a reverent _you’re beautiful_ and Derek scoffs. But, he buries a smile into the pillowcase, rubs the pleased heat coating his cheeks within the feather-down. Because Stiles always offers up things like that, gives them out like they cost him nothing to say. Maybe they don’t. Maybe it is only Derek who feels like it costs everything within him to give up pieces of himself. 

When Stiles is reduced to groaning and gasping and raking his teeth along Derek’s shoulders, he snakes a hand beneath him, his touch tingling against the skin across Derek’s stomach. Stiles curls a tight, spit-slick palm around him and Derek is gone. He was barely there to begin with. 

He squeezes his eyes shut until sparks rain down across his eyelids, until his own pulse in his ears drowns out the sound of Stiles’ praise, his broken phrases spoken with a steady heart. 

He’s oversensitive and shaking, rubbed raw and thrumming electric like a livewire. But, he allows Stiles to keep a hand fisted around him anyway, to tug until it almost hurts. Because any touch that is not ill-intentioned feels painful. It is almost worse to be regarded carefully, to have fingertips trailed gently across his skin, to feel a fist when it is spread open instead of clenched shut, to anticipate a blow but be met with a caress. It makes him feel like he is seconds away from collapsing in on himself, from ruining the shell he has spent years hardening. Stiles makes him feel like his husk doesn’t fit anymore. And it scares him. The last time he was laid bare, he had to learn how to put himself back together. All alone. The world is so big when you’re by yourself. 

Derek grinds back, does what he knows Stiles likes, works until the other man is shuddering, smearing hot pleas into the space behind Derek’s ear while he smirks at the mattress beneath him. Stiles’ body goes tight, lines rigid where he is pressed against Derek. He can feel how he shakes, how every breath comes out quivering. It makes him feel powerful. 

He can feel the press of Stiles’ tired smile into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. He says, “You are so hot,” and Derek laughs into the wrinkled topsheet.

He huffs, “Thank you,” when he really means _I love you,_ and _I have never let anyone else do this for me, to me,_ and _I wish I could offer you more than what I have to give._ Neither of them are ready for that, yet. But they both hear it. Sometimes, that is enough. It has to be, for now. 

Stiles collapses beside him, all sprawled limbs and languid lines of muscle. He traces his fingers across Derek’s ribs, where he is still breathing deep, trying to ease the ache. Trying not to feel like he has been cracked open. 

Stiles falls asleep, and when he sleeps, he snores. Quiet pulses of these oddly-snuffled noises, softened by sleep and tugged slowly from the base of his throat. It would annoy Derek, the way it echoes in the quiet. But, it is the only thing reminding him he is here. Stiles’ breath fans against his back and he allows his lips to twist with the quiet beginnings of a smile. Because as long as he can hear how Stiles’ breath catches in his chest when he inhales, muffling sleep-soft nonsensical words into his pillow, Derek is real. 

He exists. 

**Author's Note:**

> be my friend on [tumblr](https://iminsatiable.tumblr.com/)


End file.
